The Time to Start Building Your Multiparty Alliance is Now

“Our leadership sees partnering with GSIs and the largest consultancies as a strategic priority now and into next year!”
 
Over the last few months, TBR has heard that refrain repeatedly from established software companies, AI-native product companies and startups, from companies older than Microsoft to companies with just a dozen employees. Everyone, it seems, has decided that consultancies and systems integrators provide the best path to growth.

Why do consultancies and systems integrators seem like the best path to growth?

AI has made everyone in the technology space, particularly in services, question the value they can bring to enterprise clients, and what they can provide that AI cannot. Companies are also looking at how to protect their value proposition in a shifting ecosystem, where new players are constantly emerging with new technology and business models. Companies are being challenged to adapt their old partnering models — sell to, sell through, sell with; channels; and traditional joint business groups — to an AI age. Overall, AI has made companies across the ecosystem rethink their partnering strategies.

What is the fastest way to ally, expand and grow with GSIs?

Partnering smartly with global systems integrators (GSIs) and large management consultancies comes down to answering three basic questions:

1. Can I help them with client retention? Keeping their clients motivates GSIs and consultancies perhaps more than almost any other factor. Retention lets them expand the breadth of services clients pay for, boosting revenue and improving margins. Every ecosystem partner needs to contribute to client retention.
2. Can I be flexible on pricing? Before the AI age, commercial constructs fell to sales teams and alliance leads. Now, customers expect flexibility, especially for longer-term engagements, and boards want to know how partners can help adjust commercial models to meet those changing demands. An ecosystem partner that cannot, at a minimum, accommodate discussions around outcome-based pricing risks losing opportunities with GSIs and consultancies.
3. Can they explain what I do? Clients want to know why a GSI or consultancy recommends a specific product, solution or platform. “Technology agnostic” died sometime around 2022, and clients expect their services partners to bring the most applicable, scalable and innovative technologies, and on favorable terms. Plus, few things are more credible than someone telling your story well (especially if it’s a customer-zero story, though that won’t always be the case).

TBR has the data to back this up. The three questions above come from 30-plus years of examining the business of companies in the technology space and, over the last 10 years, analyzing how much their business depends on the ecosystem.
 

What will the IT services and tech ecosystem look like in 2 years?

Everything in the AI age changes fast, so what will smart strategies for partnering with GSIs and consultancies look like in 2029?
 
TBR expects multiparty relationships will become the norm. While it’s challenging to get commercial terms and sales teams aligned, in the last few years we have seen a growing number of examples where a consultancy, an IT services vendor and a cloud hyperscaler have developed joint solutions and go-to-market motions that result in multiparty alliances delivering on complex engagements. Add OEMs, chip makers and AI-natives, such as Anthropic, to the mix, and multiparty will become what clients always expect.
 
Within those alliances, TBR expects certain relationships will take the idea of strategic partner to the next level. Explicitly, publicly designated partnerships will enjoy a most-favored-nation-like arrangement, deepening the business group model pioneered by Accenture and SAP. The experiences, lessons learned, and benefits of going to market with codeveloped solutions will compound, truly and forever quashing the idea of a company within the ecosystem being technology agnostic.
 
Underpinning all this, of course, will be the imperative among all players to carefully and completely delineate who does what.
 

Strategic steps for right now

Every software and technology company should be building multiparty alliances through codeveloped solutions supported by joined-at-the-hip sales teams. Additionally, executives should be thinking about, planning for, acting on and beginning to deliver around outcome-based pricing.
 
GSIs and consultancies will be compelled to sell and deliver on outcome-based engagement structures and will want to partner with technology vendors that can do the same.